Sundays with Sondheimer: A young Trevor Bauer

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On Sundays this summer, I’m presenting my favorite videos from those I’ve shot over the last three years and telling the back story.

Today, it’s Trevor Bauer, the No. 3 pick overall in Monday’s amateur draft by the Arizona Diamondbacks.

In the fall of 2008, just weeks before he graduated early from Newhall Hart and headed off to UCLA, I went to interview him.

He was one of the most fascinating teenage athletes I’ve ever met. He was a straight-A student whose goal was to try to improve every day. He had workout routines that no one else had, as you can tell from the video. He was a 17-year-old who didn’t care if people looked at him differently. He trusted his judgment and his intellect.

And yet, there was a little apprehension. He didn’t regret leaving high school early but he wondered what it would be like at UCLA.

Three years later, the entire baseball world is talking about Bauer.

‘Hopefully, I can live my dream,’ he said earlier this week.

Here he is before the rest of the nation knew his name.

-- Eric Sondheimer